To A. A. Gould 6 April [1858]
Summary
Thanks AAG for procuring an authoritative answer from T. M. Brewer on the habits of the [American] cuckoo. Surprised William Yarrell erred so much.
Wishes AAG had time to give an account of Japanese shells, which would be interesting from the geographical point of view.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Augustus Addison Gould |
| Date: | 6 Apr [1858] |
| Classmark: | Lehigh University Libraries Special Collections (Honeyman Collection) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2448 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859. …
To Emma Darwin [25 April 1858]
Summary
Concerned about ED’s headaches, CD writes an affectionate letter.
Believes he has found a rare slave-making species of ant.
Is reading novels: Beneath the surface and Three chances.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Emma Wedgwood; Emma Darwin |
| Date: | [25 Apr 1858] |
| Classmark: | DAR 210.8: 33 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2413 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … to observe ants throughout 1858 and 1859 (DAR 205.11 (2): 88–107). Probably a mistake for …
To W. H. Miller [15 April 1858]
Summary
A set of questions CD prepared for his meeting with WHM to discuss the geometry of bees’ cells.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | William Hallowes Miller |
| Date: | [15 Apr 1858] |
| Classmark: | DAR 181: 24a |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2255A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859. [Waterhouse, George Robert. ] 1835. Bee. In …
| letter | (3) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (3) |
| Darwin, Emma | (1) |
| Gould, A. A. | (1) |
| Miller, W. H. | (1) |
| Wedgwood, Emma | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (3) |
| Darwin, Emma | (1) |
| Gould, A. A. | (1) |
| Miller, W. H. | (1) |
| Wedgwood, Emma | (1) |
The writing of "Origin"
Summary
From a quiet rural existence at Down in Kent, filled with steady work on his ‘big book’ on the transmutation of species, Darwin was jolted into action in 1858 by the arrival of an unexpected letter (no longer extant) from Alfred Russel Wallace outlining a…
Matches: 21 hits
- … hopes.— (letter to Charles Lyell, 25 [November 1859] ) The year 1858 opened with …
- … the writing of this ‘abstract’ continued until March 1859; the resulting volume was published in …
- … instinct the previous March. By the middle of March 1859, Darwin had finished the last …
- … upon Lyell for advice (letter to Charles Lyell, 28 March [1859] ). Lyell suggested the firm of …
- … plan of his book (see letter from Elwin to Murray, 3 May 1859 , and letter to John Murray, 6 …
- … the forthcoming book (letter to Charles Lyell, 30 March [1859] ). Darwin next considered calling …
- … and varieties’ (letters to Charles Lyell, 28 March [1859] , and to John Murray, 10 September …
- … Appendix II). Twice in 1858 and three times in 1859 he had gone to Moor Park in Surrey for a week’s …
- … than when I came’ (letter to W. D. Fox, [16 November 1859] ). It was during his stay at Ilkley …
- … rag is worth anything?’ (letter to T. H. Huxley, 2 June [1859] ). But as critical letters began …
- … of induction’ (letter from Adam Sedgwick, 24 November 1859 ). Equally painful was the news that …
- … (letter to Charles Lyell, [10 December 1859] ). To each of his critics, Darwin replied by resting …
- … to me to do.’ (letter to Adam Sedgwick, 26 November [1859] ). Even his strongest …
- … of Darwin’s theory (see letter to J. D. Hooker, 6 May 1859 ). Among the older scientists, only …
- … the origin of mankind. As he wrote to Darwin on 3 October 1859 , ‘the case of Man and his Races …
- … to their mercies’ (letter to J. D. Hooker, [22 November 1859] ). Late in December, to Darwin’s …
- … were the man.’ (letter to T. H. Huxley, 28 December [1859] ). Huxley admitted his authorship to …
- … without good cause.’ (letter to John Murray, 2 December [1859] ). At Murray’s trade sale …
- … had made’ (letter from Charles Kingsley, 18 November 1859 ). This and the two references to the …
- … try to make out truth’ (letter to W. D. Fox, 24 [March 1859] ). Yet he desperately wanted people …
- … on our side.—’ (letter to J. D. Hooker, 14 December [1859] ). …
Darwin in letters, 1858-1859: Origin
Summary
The years 1858 and 1859 were, without doubt, the most momentous of Darwin’s life. From a quiet rural existence filled with steady work on his ‘big book’ on species, he was jolted into action by the arrival of an unexpected letter from Alfred Russel Wallace…
Matches: 25 hits
- … The years 1858 and 1859 were, without doubt, the most momentous of Darwin’s life. From a quiet …
- … and prompted the composition and publication, in November 1859, of Darwin’s major treatise On the …
- … exceeded my wildest hopes By the end of 1859, Darwin’s work was being discussed in …
- … ‘When I was in spirits’, he told Lyell at the end of 1859, ‘I sometimes fancied that my book w d …
- … hopes.—’ ( letter to Charles Lyell, 25 [November 1859] ). This transformation in Darwin’s personal …
- … the writing of this ‘abstract’ continued until March 1859; the resulting volume was published in …
- … Botanic Gardens at Kew (see Appendix VII). The year 1859 began auspiciously with Darwin …
- … 1854) ( Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 15 (1859): xxv). One of the most …
- … theory. As he wrote in his introductory essay (Hooker 1859, p. ii): 'In the present Essay I …
- … to test such a theory. His essay, published in December 1859, was the first serious study of the …
- … the other’s ideas (see letters to J. D. Hooker, 2 March [1859] , 11 March [1859] , and 7 …
- … upon Lyell for advice ( letter to Charles Lyell, 28 March [1859] ). Lyell suggested the firm of …
- … plan of his book (see letter from Elwin to Murray, 3 May 1859 , and letter to John Murray, 6 …
- … the forthcoming book ( letter to Charles Lyell, 30 March [1859] ). Darwin next considered calling …
- … and varieties’ (letters to Charles Lyell, 28 March [1859] , and to John Murray, 10 September …
- … Appendix II). Twice in 1858 and three times in 1859 he had gone to Moor Park in Surrey for a week’s …
- … than when I came’ ( letter to W. D. Fox, [16 November 1859] ). It was during his stay at Ilkley …
- … rag is worth anything?’ ( letter to T. H. Huxley, 2 June [1859] ). But as critical letters began …
- … of induction’ ( letter from Adam Sedgwick, 24 November 1859 ). Equally painful was the news that …
- … ( letter to Charles Lyell, [10 December 1859] ). To each of his critics, Darwin replied by resting …
- … to me to do.’ ( letter to Adam Sedgwick, 26 November [1859] ). Even his strongest …
- … of Darwin’s theory ( see letter to J. D. Hooker, 6 May 1859 ). Among the older scientists, only …
- … the origin of mankind. As he wrote to Darwin on 3 October 1859, ‘the case of Man and his Races & …
- … to their mercies’ ( letter to J. D. Hooker, [22 November 1859] ). Late in December, to Darwin’s …
- … were the man.’ ( letter to T. H. Huxley, 28 December [1859] ). Huxley admitted his authorship to …
Rewriting Origin - the later editions
Summary
For such an iconic work, the text of Origin was far from static. It was a living thing that Darwin continued to shape for the rest of his life, refining his ‘one long argument’ through a further five English editions. Many of his changes were made in…
Controversy
Summary
The best-known controversies over Darwinian theory took place in public or in printed reviews. Many of these were highly polemical, presenting an over-simplified picture of the disputes. Letters, however, show that the responses to Darwin were extremely…
Matches: 6 hits
- … Letter 2525 — Darwin, C. R. to Sedgwick, Adam, 11 Nov 1859 Darwin writes to Sedgwick to tell …
- … Letter 2548 — Sedgwick, Adam to Darwin, C. R., 24 Nov 1859 Adam Sedgwick thanks Darwin for …
- … Letter 2555 — Darwin, C. R. to Sedgwick, Adam, 26 Nov [1859] Darwin says Sedgwick could not …
- … Letter 2526 — Owen, Richard to Darwin, C. R., 12 Nov 1859 Owen says to Darwin he will welcome …
- … Letter 2575 — Darwin, C. R. to Lyell, Charles, [10 Dec 1859] Darwin discusses with King' …
- … Letter 2580 — Darwin, C. R. to Owen, Richard, 13 Dec [1859] Darwin responds to Owen’s remarks …
On the Origin of Species
Summary
From a quiet rural existence at Down in Kent, filled with steady work on his ‘big book’ on the transmutation of species, Darwin was jolted into action in 1858 by the arrival of an unexpected letter (no longer extant) from Alfred Russel Wallace outlining a…
Francis Galton
Summary
Galton was a naturalist, statistician, and evolutionary theorist. He was a second cousin of Darwin’s, having descended from his grandfather, Erasmus. Born in Birmingham in 1822, Galton studied medicine at King’s College, London, and also read mathematics…
Matches: 1 hits
- … into an entirely new province of knowledge’ ( 9 December 1859 ). He soon became interested in …
Darwin and Fatherhood
Summary
Charles Darwin married Emma Wedgwood in 1839 and over the next seventeen years the couple had ten children. It is often assumed that Darwin was an exceptional Victorian father. But how extraordinary was he? The Correspondence Project allows an unusually…
Matches: 3 hits
Women as a scientific audience
Summary
Target audience? | Female readership | Reading Variation Darwin's letters, in particular those exchanged with his editors and publisher, reveal a lot about his intended audience. Regardless of whether or not women were deliberately targeted as a…
John Lubbock
Summary
John Lubbock was eight years old when the Darwins moved into the neighbouring property of Down House, Down, Kent; the total of one hundred and seventy surviving letters he went on to exchange with Darwin is a large number considering that the two men lived…
Matches: 1 hits
- … or against me. ( to John Lubbock, 14 December [1859] ) When Origin was …
Dramatisation script
Summary
Re: Design – Adaptation of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Asa Gray and others… by Craig Baxter – as performed 25 March 2007
Darwin on race and gender
Summary
Darwin’s views on race and gender are intertwined, and mingled also with those of class. In Descent of man, he tried to explain the origin of human races, and many of the differences between the sexes, with a single theory: sexual selection. Sexual…
Matches: 1 hits
- … 11 April 1833 Letter to C. R. Lyell, 11 October [1859] Letter to Charles …
The Lyell–Lubbock dispute
Summary
In May 1865 a dispute arose between John Lubbock and Charles Lyell when Lubbock, in his book Prehistoric times, accused Lyell of plagiarism. The dispute caused great dismay among many of their mutual scientific friends, some of whom took immediate action…
Matches: 10 hits
- … but his views were generally derided. 1 In 1859, Lyell visited several sites in …
- … that these were indeed implements of early humans (C. Lyell 1859). In September 1860 he visited …
- … in French, earlier reports written in Danish (Morlot 1859, Forchhammer et al. 1851–5); Lubbock …
- … for their work in the Brixham cave explorations of 1858 and 1859. 5 Another controversy arose …
- … its appearance in print; first in French, dated Berne, Sept. 1859, in the ‘Mémoires de la Société …
- … zoologist M. Claparède had also conversed with me in 1859 on the researches of the best Danish …
- … gave me an abstract for my use, in a letter dated December 1859. He referred me chiefly to ‘Oversigt …
- … and Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate. Lyell, Charles. 1859. On the occurrence of works of …
- … vols. London: John Murray. Morlot, Charles Adolphe. 1859. Etudes géologico-archéologiques en …
- … struggle for life . By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859. Owen, Richard. 1863. Ape …
Instinct and the Evolution of Mind
Summary
Sources|Discussion Questions|Experiment Slave-making ants For Darwin, slave-making ants were a powerful example of the force of instinct. He used the case of the ant Formica sanguinea in the On the Origin of Species to show how instinct operates—how…
Matches: 3 hits
Darwin & Glen Roy
Summary
Although Darwin was best known for his geological work in South America and other remote Beagle destinations, he made one noteworthy attempt to explain a puzzling feature of British geology. In 1838, two years after returning from the voyage, he travelled…
Matches: 1 hits
- … [after September 20 1847] To A.C. Ramsay, 1 July [1859] From Thomas Jamieson, …
Women’s scientific participation
Summary
Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants Darwin’s correspondence helps bring to light a community of women who participated, often actively and routinely, in the nineteenth-century scientific community. Here is a…
Matches: 4 hits
- … Letter 2447 - Darwin to Murray, J., [5 April 1859] Darwin asks his publisher, John …
- … Letter 2461 - Darwin to Hooker, J. D., [11 May 1859] Darwin expresses anxiety over …
- … Letter 2475 - Darwin to Hooker, J. D., [2 July 1859] Darwin returns the manuscript of …
- … Letter 2501 - Lyell, C. to Darwin, [3 October 1859] Lyell offers praise and …
Origin
Summary
Darwin’s most famous work, Origin, had an inauspicious beginning. It grew out of his wish to establish priority for the species theory he had spent over twenty years researching. Darwin never intended to write Origin, and had resisted suggestions in 1856…
Matches: 8 hits
- … across tropics ’. When Hooker’s essay was published in 1859, it was one of the first publications …
- … as by far the most capable judge in Europe. ’ By April 1859, he was able to tell Wallace that ‘ …
- … Abstract ’ would not be finished until around April 1859. But this was an optimistic estimate. …
- … of favoured races” ’, he told Lyell. On 31 March 1859, Darwin wrote to Murray describing his work …
- … the work of correcting proofs continued over the summer of 1859, Darwin had to take the water cure …
- … never shirked a difficulty’, he told Lyell on 20 September 1859, ‘ I am foolishly anxious for your …
- … of Science meeting held in Aberdeen from 14 to 21 September 1859. Darwin was confident that in time …
- … and negative, to his work flowed in. By early December 1859, he admitted that he needed to ‘ think …
Religion
Summary
Design|Personal Belief|Beauty|The Church Perhaps the most notorious realm of controversy over evolution in Darwin's day was religion. The same can be said of the evolution controversy today; however the nature of the disputes and the manner in…
Darwin in public and private
Summary
Extracts from Darwin's published works, in particular Descent of man, and selected letters, explore Darwin's views on the operation of sexual selection in humans, and both his publicly and privately expressed views on its practical implications…
Darwin’s reading notebooks
Summary
In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to read in Notebook C (Notebooks, pp. 319–28). In 1839, these lists were copied and continued in separate notebooks. The first of these reading notebooks (DAR 119…
Matches: 18 hits
- … Hooker has it.— Very important Hookers letter Jan. 1859 Yules Ava [Yule 1858] (Innes) Hairy …
- … The Dog in health & Disease by Stonehenge—Longman 1859 [Stonehenge 1859].— on Toy–Dogs …
- … [Combe 1828] Macclintocks Arctic Voyage [Macclintock 1859] [DAR *128: 153] …
- … [G. Bennett 1860] Read 114 Village Bells [Manning] 1859] } Fanny The Woman in White …
- … Republic [Motley 1855] [DAR 128: 24] 1859 Pagets Lectures on Pathology …
- … 1803] (nothing) [DAR 128: 25] 1859 Feb. 28 Olmstead S. States [Olmsted …
- … Mast [R. H. Dana [1840] (good) Bertrams [Trollope 1859] & Adam Bede [Eliot 1859] …
- … (many novels) Dec: Dana to Cuba & back [R. H. Dana 1859] —— Cruize in Japanese …
- … on Maladies of Silk-worm [Quatrefages de Bréau 1859] Owen Lecture on Classification [R. Owen …
- … March. 8 Houdins the conjurer Life [Robert-Houdin [1859] 19 MacClintocks Narrative …
- … Gesellschaft für die gesammten Naturwissenschaften . In 1859 he was the coauthor, with E. Desor, …
- … des progrès de la géologie de 1834 à 1845(–1859) . 8 vols. Paris. [Vol. 1 (1847) in Darwin …
- … at sea . New York. [Other eds.] 128: 25 ——. 1859. To Cuba and back. A vacation voyage …
- … Eliot, George, pseud . (Marian Evans Cross). 1859. Adam Bede . 3 vols. Edinburgh. [Other …
- … (1849): 381–420. [Separately printed in 2 vols. (Paris, 1859) in Darwin Library.] *128: 177 …
- … 119: 16a Hodson, William Stephen Raikes. 1859. Twelve years of a soldier’s life in …
- … 1–46. 119: 9b [Jenkin, Henrietta Camilla]. 1859. Cousin Stella; or, conflict . 3 …
- … Library.] 119: 9a Macclintock, Francis Leopold. 1859. The voyage of the “Fox” in …
John Murray
Summary
Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was published on 22 November 1859. The publisher was John Murray, who specialised in non-fiction, particularly politics, travel and science, and had published…
Matches: 4 hits
- … natural selection (Origin) was published on 22 November 1859. The publisher was John Murray, who …
- … cousin and business partner, the earliest letters date from 1859, the year of the publication of …
- … you may not repent of having undertaken it’ (15 October [1859] Letter 2506 ). Murray decided on a …
- … & proud at the appearance of my child’ ([3 November 1859] Letter 2514 ). In the event, all …
